Pitchfork TV: Music Videos for the Hipster Crowd

Pitchfork, the popular music news and reviews site, has just launched Pitchfork TV, a site where you can watch featured videos, watch live shows and events, and browse videos from a number of bands who have the favor of the Pitchfork gods.

If you weren't already tired of the "everything you listen to sucks" mentality of popular music critics, now you get to see them rant about how bad your favorite bands are as well. Pitchfork, a popular site for music news and reviews, has just launched Pitchfork TV, where you can watch featured videos, live shows, and events, and browse videos from a number of bands who enjoy the favor of the Pitchfork gods.

Pitchfork may be one of the definitive sources for music news and information on the Web, but its text-heavy and in-depth reviews are likely a turnoff to the YouTube set. To correct this, someone at Pitchfork had an idea: Music videos are the way to go, and Pitchfork TV was born. The site hosts dozens of music videos of featured and preferred artists, from Radiohead to The Thermals and everyone in between.

The Pitchfork staff didn't forget their special brand of snark when they moved to video. One of the featured video sets at Pitchfork TV is the casting calls for personalities to host Pitchfork's video programs, where potential hosts are handed copy laced with profanity to read with a straight face in front of a camera while a pair of tragically hip producers judge them. Granted, if music videos were all there were to Pitchfork TV, YouTube could fill the gap, so the editors had to come up with something.

The music videos are probably Pitchfork TV's strongest suit. You'll find only a few dozen actual videos from various bands, but you'll also have to wade through a couple of pseudo-documentary films and introspectives to get to them in some cases. Pitchfork TV also sports a set of "live" recordings, where bands or artists are recorded live and the raw video uploaded for fans and critics alike to see.

Pitchfork TV has some of the features that you'd expect from a video site. The videos are large and embedded in Flash, so they keep playing as you navigate the rest of the site. You can't comment on any of the videos, or create a profile and add favorites; what you can see is based entirely on what's available and the site's update schedule. You usually get a permanent link to send to friends, and not quite as often you'll see embed code so you can paste the video into your own blog or personal Web site. Some videos are even available to download directly to your computer.

If you're a music fan, you'll enjoy the music videos that are available and come back as the library expands. If you're a Pitchfork fan, you'll enjoy everything the site has to offer, although it's not tremendously much as yet. If you're not a Pitchfork fan, you'll probably just wonder why these guys think they're funny.